QAP Duration Extended

Today I'm afraid I must be the bearer of some minor bad news. We are tightening up our moderation checks on new articles in order to do a better job of ensuring no spam slips through and becomes featured (which is great for both HubPages and Network Sites). However, it means that as of today, we're extending the potential pending time for new articles from 24 hours to 48 hours. This does not mean every new article will take 48 hours to be processed, it just means it may take that long once in a while when we get a high volume of submissions. We know the wait can be frustrating, but we believe the overall benefit to the site will be worth it. Thanks for your patience, and for keeping up the great writing!

I don't see a problem with this as long as moderators don't confuse "spam" with items that are necessary to make articles more beneficial for readers.

Also, although I think this is a great idea, I have concerns about two things:

1/ Older articles that have never been edited and therefore do not go through QAP but are still visible to search engines and

2. articles that pass QAP even though they have very obvious issues.

Recently I've seen posts about the second item and find myself wondering how those with problems are passing. Can't tell you which ones they are or how many, but do know they are out there as forum posters have made complaints about them within the last month or so.

As long as hubs that are not up to current standards remain on the site or get onto the niche sites, it's going to continue to hurt all of us here.

Regarding the first point you brought up, you don't have to worry about the articles that have not gone through QAP, because it's been a long time since the QAP process is being used and hubs that were not getting enough search traffic were not featured anymore. So if there are hubs which Google sees as problematic, they do not get traffic and are therefore not being indexed anymore.

I have no issue with this, as long as, like TT2 said, editors and moderators aren't going overboard with what they are calling "spam".

Is there also a backlog for niche site submission reviews? I noticed some sites are moving along fine, where others seem to have slowed considerably. Exemplore and Owlcation are two that seem to have slowed.

hi christy, does this 48hrs pending time still allow us to share our stories on other sites even if the duration to wait is not up yet? in the past, though not yet featured we were allowed to share our pending articles on fb, twitter, pinterest, etc.

No problem. I actually prefer it because one of the ways in which I figure out the kind of response my article will have is how many people from my various social networking sites read it. Then I tweak!

Anything passing QAP should immediately go to the appropriate network site. That way, it will not be subjected to any hubpages.com domain name association. I'm pretty sure I don't have to explain my reasoning behind this. Or is HP already doing that? I hope so.

Passing the QAP does not necessarily mean that an article is suitable for one of our sites. The QAP is a bare minimum to be published by HubPages, while making it to a Network Site requires meeting additional criteria.

Yeah, Christy, this is a good suggestion right here. How about setting articles with a QAP of 8 and above (I think this is the stellar number?) to go into another queue for the niche sites and not get published on the HP domain? I'm sure people won't mind waiting the extra time if this is possible?

We do look at all new articles that become featured for inclusion on sites, though not all are chosen. We want to get to a point where we have the resources to edit all the articles that are not accepted immediately, but that's still in the far future. We see no indication that articles that stay on HubPages longer do worse than ones chosen within 24 hours of being published.

I was always wondering about that too. I wouldn't mind waiting for new hubs to go straight to niche sites. But you put my mind a ease Christy. Thanks for that explanation. And as for the extended wait time to pass QAP, I don't mind. It's serves a good purpose.

I welcome this amendment to QAP. Even though I am sure it'll not slow the publishing time. For most of my present articles it took only 4 hours time to get published when the publishing time was regarded as 24 hours.

I don't disapprove of any changes HUPages has ever made. The changes are usually always for the better. That being said …

New articles? OR New writers? Picked up on a thread elsewhere and it seems old loyal writers are getting eMails about their HUBs which have been around for a while not being up to standard. Is this a fluke? Seems to me if you have that tool where a HUB is not even featured, there's no need to upset loyal writers who have been with this site for years. The fact that they been here for years and published HUBs and stayed active should count for something more than a SPAM Slap in the face. That's how they interpret the eMails. I'm just saying. Quality is key. But so is loyalty.